Anthropology of Organ Transplantation

Anthropology of Organ Transplantation: Gift of Body and Economy of Affection
Goro Yamazaki

210 mm x 148 mm
292 pages
JPY 3,900
ISBN 9784790716556
Pub date: February 2015

This book covers issues such as the unseen anguish of families of organ donors and the whereabouts of the bodies that have been turned into parts, and presents arguments on brain death. Through an elaborate analysis of systems and practices, the book clarifies life and death beyond technological interventions to one’s body, and depicts the process of reorganizing order in our society and the economy.

Points of Appeal

1. The real voices of doctors, patients, patients’ families and academics involved in organ transplantation medicine
2. A perspective that views the exchange of organs as an economic activity in the economic anthropological sense 
3. Detailed description of the history of organ transplantation as a new technology

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Anthropology of organ transplantation

Part I. The economic theory of organ transplantation

Chapter 1: Giving as social policy
Chapter 2: The “economy of love” and the market economy

Part II: Medical practice and the transformation of the body

Chapter 3: How people donate organs
Chapter 4: Self and others in the recipient’s body
Chapter 5: When donor family meets recipient: Anonymous giving and its effects

Part III: Restructuring the body and the economy

Chapter 6: The politics of legitimacy: The brain death debate today
Chapter 7: Globalization and the future of health policy
Chapter 8: From treatment to adjustment of numbers: Changing attention to the body

End: Life with technology

Endnotes
Afterword
Acknowledgments
References
Index

Author Information
Goro Yamazaki
Born in 1978. Professor at Osaka University CO Design Center. Specialized in cultural anthropology. D. in Human Sciences.